Move Your Feet to the Marching Drum
by EllieMurasaki
Summary: I didn't want to fight any wars. I still don't. But I met a column of engine smoke that poured itself down my throat and introduced itself as Ruby, and I got stuck in a war my folks don't know is real.


oxoniensis at livejournal is running the Fall Fandom Free-For-All and woodstarling at livejournal requested "Katie!Ruby and Castiel". This is not that story.

We've seen Ruby in what, four meatsuits? Katie, Genevieve, secretary, and hotel maid. We have at least a couple words of backstory on three of those. We have zilch on Katie. This isn't that story either.

The first duty of a captured soldier is to survive, and the second is to keep fighting for God and country. This is not that story either.

_I didn't want to fight any wars. I still don't. But I met a column of engine smoke that poured itself down my throat and introduced itself as Ruby, and I got stuck in a war my folks don't know is real. My daddy's a soldier and my mama's a Buncombe County Mitchell, and I will not shame my family._ This is that story.

xXxXx

"Guard your women, children well," she chants. "Send these bastards back to hell, we'll teach them the ways of war, they won't come here anymore, close your mind—fuck wrong verse." She reaches for the lyrics and they trickle away between her fingers. "Fuck. Sam. _Sam_. Sam egg Sam Sam bacon and Sam. Sam sausage Sam Sam bacom Sam tomato and Sam. Sam Sam Sam egg and Sam. Lobster thermidor—fuck fuck _Sam_."

Sam shifts on his pillow, his mouth moving in what might be 'Ruby'. She leans forward, hope sparking, but he's still asleep, oblivious.

"Sam. Come on. Sam."

"Katie." It's a deep voice, someone she doesn't know.

Her heart stutters—no one has heard her, seen her, since Sarajane in May—but she doesn't turn. She has to get Sam's attention. _Has_ to. "God-fucking-dammit SAM!"

"Katie Mae."

She whips around. There's no shortage of people who know that name, but gravel-voice isn't supposed to be one of them. (Whoever he is, he's cute.) (She's supposed to be a little past caring about cute.) "Who are you?"

"Castiel," he says. "You need to go home."

Great-Aunt Louisa's potato salad. "Dean's angel," she says. "Messenger of the Lord. Can you give Sam a message for me?"

"My orders are to send you home."

Uncle Cam's apple pie. "Case you hadn't noticed, there's a war on. I just spent a year behind enemy lines, I have intel Sam needs, and you're the only person in months who knows I'm here. _Help me._

"You never wanted to be a soldier."

"Doesn't _matter_!" she shouts, suddenly frustrated beyond words with the whole fucked-up mess. (Been a few days since the last time she exploded. She's probably due.) "If Sam doesn't stop Lilith—_stop_ Lilith, that's important, and lose Ruby—he has to know, he _has_ to—" She stops, breathes. She doesn't need to, but it's calming. "You're a soldier," she says. "I don't know if angels have family, but if you do, I bet a lot of them are soldiers. Half my family's soldiers. Every war Americans have fought in, there's been Buncombe County Mitchells fighting it. I didn't want to fight any wars. I still don't. But I met a column of engine smoke that poured itself down my throat and introduced itself as Ruby, and I was stuck in a war my folks don't know is real. Trust me, I'd love nothing better than to go beat my sword into a plowshare." She'd been studying for a biology degree. She'd wanted the world's hungry fed, not dead. "But I am Katherine Mary Butler and my daddy's a soldier and my mama's a Buncombe County Mitchell, and I will not shame my family!" She's yelling again, but she doesn't care—there's still the chance Sam will wake up, hear her. "I wasn't strong enough to stop her, but I could listen to her, and she can't be trusted and Sam needs to know she can't be trusted, and the only person he might believe about her is me! You have to get him to hear me!"

He has, she notes, an impressive poker face. He hasn't even flickered an eyelash.

"To every thing there is a season," he says, "and a time to every purpose under heaven."

She joins in with "A time to be born, a time to die," then skips ahead to "a time to mourn, a time to dance." Fuck she misses dancing. "I cry out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I am in distress, I seek the Lord; at night I stretch out untiring hands and my soul refuses to be comforted. You keep my eyes from closing; I am too troubled to speak." She looks at Sam. "Or I can speak all I like but he won't _hear me_. Please—if he doesn't—everyone might die—" Memorial Day picnics at the Clanstead, a hundred people easily, and she's missed two, now, the first because Ruby told her they could go if she didn't mind a high body count (that was about when she stopped trying to fight) and the second she was there but she wasn't _there_ to anyone but Sarajane and _why_ hadn't she had Sarajane call Sam _then_, before Sarajane stopped being willing to believe she was there?

"The length of your days is seventy years," he answers, "or eighty, if you have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and you fly away."

"And that makes it all _right_?" she demands. "Whose side are you _on_?"

"I have my orders." He's gone.

"Nuremberg," she says to the empty air, then slumps down on Sam's bed. "Sam, Sam, listen to me, please, _please_, Ruby's working for Lilith, you can't kill her, you can't kill Lilith, you _can't_," and he's still asleep, he still can't hear her, nobody can hear her except the ones who won't listen, and she was a POW for a year and her family thinks she went AWOL to go on killing sprees and she can't get to heaven on roller skates or otherwise because she told Death to take a hike so she could pass on her intel and she knows enough about ghosts to know being dead will make her crazy-homicidal and it'd be worth it if she could only _make him listen_ but she can't can she the world will end rocks fall everyone dies her fault her fault _her fault_ she wants to go home

She moves to wipe tears from her eyes and stops, staring at her hand in abstract fascination. Her body must be burning, she thinks; she knows, vaguely, that that's how ghosts die.

She can't. Not yet. She has to stay. He has to know.

She hears Alice Mary's trumpet, recognizes the tune, remembers the words. _Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky,_ she smells cookies baking, _all is well, safely rest,_ and there was light.


End file.
